Mocha Surprise!
Nation at the Precipice – No Prescription Needed for the Pill!
Here we go again! More knee-jerkers suggesting the government’s new scheme will only lead to more knee-tremblers between under 16s. I find it hard to fathom how the reporting of this subject can be so blatantly unbalanced. In one paragraph we have Office for National Statistics stats telling us that the highest abortion rates are in the 20-24 age band, and we know that the majority of teenage conceptions (under-18s) are to 16 and 17 year olds – but they STILL focus on the under 16s at the centre of this story.
There is some truth in the notion that the more you focus on what you don’t want, the more of what you don’t want you end up getting. And we seem to be obsessed with children having sex in this country. Whenever there is a ‘teenage pregnancy’ story, the press want the youngest examples – if there’s news about contraception, it’s always the access of the under-16s that gets most column inches (fnar fnar!). And the pill is so ‘old hat’. There are so many other contraceptive options now – many with a much lower margin of ‘user-error’.
If we really want to help young people here, we need to raise them to feel good about themselves (self-esteem and ambition are powerful contraceptives) and offer them methods of protection that WORK at a time in their lives when regularity and daily routine aren’t always top of the agenda. Forgetting pills, throwing up (let’s not forget, of course, that they are all binge-drinkers too – allegedly), taking them with other medications, gaining weight…there are so many ways that the pill’s effectiveness can be challenged. Contraceptive implants are much more effective for many people and we’re not promoting them with any way near the intensity that the pill has coverage.
This story is also dominated by professional jealousies (“pharmacists aren’t as good as doctors” they whine). The use of phrases like ‘handing out’ and ‘on demand’ are grossly misleading. The Daily Mail (quelle suprise!) reports that it could even lead to deaths. Even the Royal Society of Medicine was quoted as saying we have a ‘catastrophic tidal wave’ of teenage conception and unwanted pregnancy. I’ll say it again! Our under-18 conception rates have not gone up since the 1970s – they just haven’t come down. This should not be likened to a freak Tsunami – it’s the long-term result of a culture that cannot accept the sexuality and sexual expression of its youth or work with them ,pragmatically, to reduce risk.
That frothy mocha-frappuccino is brewing nicely folks. . . . get out of your pit and take a deep breath.
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